Decolonial Thinking and Practice (AXL4206S)

This course is intended to give an introduction to the growing body of thought coming out of Latin America under the heading of decolonial thinking, exemplified in the work of scholars like Walter Mignolo, Arturo Escobar, Enrique Dussel, Santiago Castro-Gomez, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Anibal Quijano, and others. This work has been significant in framing an approach to questions of knowledge, coloniality and globalization. At its most ambitious, it attempts to re-write the script of modernity. In a more immediate way, it provides a rich set of conceptual resources through which to re-think a familiar set of issues.

The course will take a key word approach, and is divided into two-week blocks. Each block will be given to a new set of key words or concepts and the readings that introduce and discuss them. Key words and concepts include:

Coloniality (of power/ knowledge/ being)

Geopolitics of knowledge

Colonial globality and global designs

Border theory and colonial difference

Modernity (colonial modernity, peripheral modernity, transmodernity)

Global designs and the local

The Indigenous Movement and postcolonial ethnicities

A way in for us, will be the notion of reading decoloniality from the Cape: How does a body of thought which frames a critique based on South American/ Latin American historical experiences translate to African contexts of practice? How does it speak to the particularity of histories of knowledge production and colonial engagement in the Cape? How does this body of work connect with contemporary debates in the field of African Studies, which address questions of knowledge and epistemology?

Assessment:

Assessment will be based on two class presentations and a research paper (counting 50%). Each student will be required to prepare two 10-minute presentations, one on an essay/ chapter drawn from the course readings, and one on a practitioner/ body of work/ decolonial intervention/ instance of decolonial practice.